In our class we've spent a lot of
time discussing digitization. I thought it would be interesting to
feature a number of interesting digital projects for this post, but
it turned out somewhat different. I ended up looking at one project
only, and found some troubling things in it and I'd like to discuss
them here.
The project is one being
administered by the British Library that I'm sure many people have
already heard about. The project in question is the British Library's
Endangered Archives Programme. The
idea behind this program is to provide grants to fund the
preservation of collections that are endangered for various reasons.
The end goal would be that the collections would be moved to a safer
location if possible, and also digitized to preserve them in another
format. The project is international in scope, and according to the
web page, it is "re-active" in nature, that is while the
British Library will provide the funds, they will not actively seek
out collections, but will award grants to institutions, groups, or
individuals who apply and are accepted.
This
is definitely the kind of project that needs to be done more
frequently. The collections in question are endangered for numerous
reasons, poor storage being one of the major ones. Here is an
example at the extreme end of things of how some materials were being
stored at a monastery in Ethiopia:
The
paper materials here are actually being stored in a pile in a cave!
Now if that's not an unhappy place for for any kind of documents to
be I really couldn't think of one. I can only guess that the caves
must be very dry, otherwise the documents would probably be long
gone. Interestingly this particular project failed to really get off
the ground. According to the project web page only four manuscripts
were scanned because the permission to scan the rest was revoked by
the local community because of disagreements with the municipal
authorities. Not every situation with a project like this is going
to work out, but I'm more concerned with quality control in general.
Because
the project is "re-active" the projects are apparently
setting their own standards. I've noticed that some of the images
that are being taken are not particularly high resolution. Here is
an image from another archive from Ethiopia:
And a
link to the zoomed in version available on the collection page:
http://eap.bl.uk/database/large_image.a4d?digrec=174887;r=19169
It is
fairly clear from looking at this image that much of this text is
illegible at this resolution. I downloaded the JPEG to my computer
and could not zoom to any real detail with it becoming extremely
pixelated and blurred. I've also seen pages from another collection
where the images of the pages are cropped at the edge and some text
can't be fully seen. The project page does set out guidelines for
scanning and photographing material, but It doesn't seem at all clear
that it is being followed.
I
guess the question that comes to mind is: Why are they shelling out
large amounts of money if there isn't even a basic standard being
followed for the images? To be fair, perhaps these pages are meant
as a preview of higher quality images that would have to be requested
or viewed on site of the British Library? I don't see any indication
that this is the case though. According to the guidelines images of
manuscripts should be at least 300ppi and this image as downloaded is
only 120ppi. Much of the manuscript is viewable at this resolution
as the main body of the text is in larger characters:
The
first few pages that are handwritten may contain important historical
information about this particular volume and it is unfortunate that
they are largely unreadable.
This
is not the only volume or image by any means within the various
collections of this project that is difficult to read. I guess the
next question that comes to mind is: Is some level of work done
better than none at all? And I suppose the answer should probably be
yes? Obviously I'm not involved in this project at all, but it is
incredibly frustrating to see images like this one here:
Which
comes from this document:
http://eap.bl.uk/database/overview_item.a4d?catId=117781;r=24464
It is
difficult for me to understand an outcome like this, not only from
perspective of the photographers, but also from it being uploaded to
this site. As it stands it is little more than a vague
representation of a text in which nothing can be read.
It
seems clear to me that there can be serious consequences with the
type of hands off approach that seems to be being taken by the
British Library in this case. If some of these documents were caught
in a fire or otherwise destroyed tomorrow, the images would be
woefully inadequate representations of the original documents. On
the other hand there are quite a few collections which have good
quality images, and in the case of the previous photograph, the
collection was moved to a better storage location and individual
materials housed in a more proper manner.
I
really think the British Library ought to look closely at this
program and think hard about some of its outcomes. Here are a few
questions they might want to ask:
By
using such a hands off approach can standards really be enforced?
If
higher quality images are available, how can they be integrated into
the digital collections, or how can access be made more straight
forward?
Who is
in charge of quality control of what is being uploaded, and shouldn't
they have some explaining to do as to why some of those images are up
there to begin with?
What
constitutes a useful image and how much does that differ between
different communities of users?
Admittedly
I too still have questions that could use some answering before I
form a more informed opinion, but I'm a little surprised at some of
what I'm seeing here. The British Library is a world class
institution, and I guess I would have expected higher standards than
this. Many collections do in fact have good high quality images, but
that doesn't seem a valid excuse to me to allow some items to be
photographed so poorly as to be virtually useless. I'm certainly not trying to play "gotcha" here, but when dealing with these kinds of documents and this kind of project, it is clear a high level of vigilance is necessary to prevent these kinds of issues from coming up.
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Endangered Archives at the British Library Homepage :
http://eap.bl.uk/
EAP copying and scanning guidelines:
http://eap.bl.uk/downloads/guidelines_copying.pdf
http://eap.bl.uk/database/results.a4d?projID=EAP432
EAP526: Digitisation of the endangered monastic archive at May Wäyni (Tigray, Ethiopia):
http://eap.bl.uk/database/results.a4d?projID=EAP526
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